Recap of blog of Yellen with past Fed chiefs Bernanke, Greenspan and Volcker

April 7, 2016, 4:32 PM ET

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen participated in a roundtable with three of her predecessors: Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker. Here is MarketWatch’s Greg Robb live-blog of the proceedings.

A public conversation between 4 Fed leaders has never happened before. The four leaders did gather to celebrate the Fed’s 100th anniversary in December 2013 but didn’t discuss the economy or the outlook.

Yellen says she’s more upbeat about regulation of big banks than Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari. She says a lot of progress has been made. Kashkari is pressing the government to consider breaking up the biggest banks.

“I’m pleased where things are going,” Yellen says, of bank reforms. She says she does not agree with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders that Wall Street has too much sway over the Fed.

Bernanke blames the media, in part, for sparking unnecessary concern about the growth in the Fed’s balance sheet in the aftermath of the crisis. Many worried that the Fed’s bond-buying would spark hyper-inflation.

Yellen says the Fed has a strategy with the balance sheet and said she’s comfortable with its current level. She and Bernanke laughed over the fact that Bernanke left her the job of reducing the balance sheet.

Yellen said the December rate hike shows the Fed can still tighten monetary policy even with a large balance sheet, which rose by close to $3 trillion during the crisis to $4.5 trillion.

Greenspan said he doesn’t see the yuan as a threat to the dollar. Volcker agrees. He said if the yuan was floating that means China would be a more open economy. That will be a good thing, Volcker said. Bernanke agrees.

Bernanke was also interesting on the dollar’s status as a global reserve currency. Conventional wisdom is that the U.S. benefits from this status and would be hurt if China’s currency makes strides to replace the greenback. Bernanke said that benefits of being the global reserve currency are overblown and that there are some costs as well.